This invention relates to the field of determining data communications conditions in a communications bus in a piece of equipment, such as a vehicle.
Prior to the present invention, service technicians have had at their disposal tools for analyzing data communications in a vehicle that provided very limited amounts of information. For example, the J1939/EPL Data link tester, designed by the assignee of the present application and sold by Nexiq Technologies of Sterling Heights, Mich., was only capable of provide information indicating whether a data link was functioning in response to a specific command.
Moreover, certain presently existing tools designed by engineers are capable of providing greater quantities of information, an example of such a tool being the Canalyzer software package sold by Vector Informatik GmbH of Stuttgart, Germany. However, such engineering tools are not designed for diagnostic use by service technicians. Engineering tools generally have complicated user interfaces and are unsuited to be easily usable by a service technician.
Further, engineering tools such as the Canalyzer are not designed to provide the functionality desired in a diagnostic tool. For example, prior art tools lack the functionality of specifically polling equipment components and reporting on information received as a result of the polling. Similarly, prior art tools lack the functionality of measuring the time it takes for a specific component to respond to a request, and reporting when the specific component fails to respond for a specified period of time. Also, the aforementioned engineering tools generally are not portable, a highly desirable feature in a diagnostic tool.